Knowing God: Chapter 15 - The Wrath of God

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Chapter 15 of Knowing God is a sobering chapter on the wrath of God. As Dr. Packer notes the wrath of God is a theme emphasized throughout the Bible, both the Old (e.g. Nahum 1:2-8) and the New Testaments (e.g. 2 Thes 1:7-10). He quotes A. W. Pink from his book The Attributes of God noting, “A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness.”

It is important to note that God’s wrath is never sinfully motivated or derived: “God is only angry where it is called for...all God’s indignation is righteous.”
  1. God’s wrath is always judicial; that is, it is always a just wrath, administering justice to those who rightly deserve it. (Psa 62:12; Prov 24:12; Rom 2:5-6)
  2. God’s wrath is something people choose for themselves. (John 3:18-19) “The decisive act of judgment upon the lost is the judgment which they pass upon themselves, by rejecting the light that comes to them in and through Jesus Christ.” In the final analysis, the choice is simple: follow Christ or not.
God’s wrath is not arbitrary or unfair. Rather, “the essence of God’s action in wrath is to give men what they choose.” The wrath of God is actually an honoring of the free-will choice of man. (cf. Gen 3 and Adam and Eve’s choice to avoid God’s presence)

Dr. Packer makes 3 critical points about the wrath of God that Paul teaches us in Romans:
  1. The meaning of God’s wrath - “God’s resolute action in punishing sin.” It is a “personal, emotional attitude” of God just as much as God’s love is. It is “the active manifesting of his hatred of irreligion and moral evil.”
  2. The revelation of God’s wrath - Knowledge of God’s wrath is revealed to everyone as “it imprints itself directly on every person’s conscience: those whom God has given up to a ‘depraved mind’ (Rom 1:28) to do uninhibited evil still know ‘God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death’ (Rom 1:32). No one is entirely without inklings of judgment to come.” This is manifested in the present through “judicial hardening [God rightly hardening the hearts of those who rebel against Him] and withdrawal of restraints [from committing sin] whereby people are given up to their own corrupt preferences and so come to put into practice more and more uninhibitedly the lusts of their sinful hearts.”
  3. The deliverance from God’s wrath - We are and will be saved from God’s rightful and righteous wrath by Christ (Rom 5:9), by His blood sacrifice on our behalf as we place our faith in Him, our “self-abandoning trust in the person and work of Jesus.” (Rom 3:24-25; 1 Jn 2:2; 1 Thes 1:10)

Dr. Packer finishes by quoting a passage from A. W. Pink’s The Attributes of God that makes three important points as to why we need to meditate frequently on the reality of the wrath of God:

  1. ”That our hearts may be duly impressed by God’s detestation of sin”
  2. “To beget true fear in our souls for God” (Heb 12:28-29)
  3. “To draw out our soul in fervant praise [to Jesus Christ] for having delivered us from ‘the wrath to come’ (1 Thes 1:10).”

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